Phillies Arizona Fall League Notes: Week 2

Giles has one of the best arms in Fall League but the wheels fell off on Saturday when he surrendered six runs on four hits and three walks without retiring a batter. Keith Law expressed concern over the lack of movement on the fastball and graded out the slider as average. It’s fine to be psyched about Giles’ arm and I’m pretty sure this is a big league pitcher if he stays healthy, but we were excited about Scott Mathieson’s arm, too.

After a disastrous debut, Nesseth has settled down a little bit. He’s inducing more groundballs but still struggling to miss bats. The secondary stuff just isn’t there to do it. He didn’t walk anyone this week, a good sign after his ball chucking fiasco on the 9th.

Wright has surrendered ten baserunners in 3.1 innings so far this fall. Everything is up and to his glove side. Wright’s inability to command the baseball to his arm side has always been an issue and I was hoping that a maybe Peoria’s staff would have answers for this issue. So far they have not. Wright gave up a HR to Byron Buxton on Monday. The fastball’s plus velocity and curveball depth make him hard to give up on.

Rupp’s hit well thus far but opposing pitchers are seemingly making adjustments to his pull-happy swing and approach. Of Rupp’s three strikeouts on Saturday, all final strikes came on pitches on the outer half of the plate, away from Rupp. All the balls he put in play this week were to the left side. Pull pull pull.

He’ played just two games so far so there isn’t a whole lot to say. All three balls he put in play on Saturday were breaking balls. The fact that he’s making contact with them certainly isn’t a bad sign. Adding Perkins to the Peoria roster means that, of the seven Phillies players on the team, five of them are 6’4″ or better. Of the other two, one of them throws 100mph and the other weighs 240lbs on a good day. The Phillies sent some strange physical specimens to the desert.

He played just one game this week and has only played three games overall. The Phillies came into Fall League needing to evaluate Altherr and Kelly Dugan and decide if they warranted a 40-man roster spot. Two weeks in and the two of them have played three total games. The Phillies do a spectacular job of evaluating their own players so these decisions have likely already been made (word is that Dugan is likely to be added) but at the very least it would have been good for them both to get more reps. Altherr was 1-4 this week with a double on an 89mph Jef Urlaub fastball he roped to center field.

Former Phillies farmhand Lendy Castillo, who the Cubs selected in the Rule 5 draft two years ago, was up to 95mph on Wednesday with a mid-80s slider and changeup. He’s given up nine baserunners in four innings.